A word of unsolicited advice on this week’s events in China.
In advance of this week’s meeting between Xi Jinping and Donald Trump, my strong suggestion is that you ignore all commentary that will invariably be flooding traditional and social media.
It is a fluid situation and no one, including myself, has a clue what to expect.
The only point that I would share is how the last minute meeting in Seoul between Sec Bessent and He Lifeng plays into the expectations for the Xi-Trump summit.
To the point, if such a meeting is being held this close to the Beijing summit, then means many of the key issues haven’t yet been finalized. Even if the parties can come to some sort of tacit agreement in Seoul, whatever is agreed to would still need to be vetted by Xi and his team. There simply isn’t enough time for whatever issues are being hammered out to be agreed to by the principals.
Moreover, based upon the disclosed itinerary it does appear to be nothing more than a series of performative photo-ops.
